


Traitor's Remorse

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Core World accents and chrome armor are metaphors for love, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Phasma Redemption, Phasma tall Leia small, Redeemed Ben Solo, Resistance Member Phasma, Self-Preservation Instincts, Size Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Phasma's self-preservation instincts kick in.
Relationships: Leia Organa/Phasma
Kudos: 17





	Traitor's Remorse

Self-preservation was the key; it was what got Phasma through her childhood, what got her out of the caves of Parnassos; it was how she catapulted through the stormtrooper ranks, beating out men and women who’d trained since childhood. It was how she earned her armor, and she’d never valued anything like she valued that armor.

But here was the unfortunate truth: stormtrooper armor didn’t do shit to protect you from the fire. If anything, it only served to roast you faster. 

Her instincts took over. Self-preservation kicked in.

She swallowed the words she wanted to say and took FN-2187’s hand. 

* * *

She was taken to Crait with binders on her wrists and her own blaster muzzle wedged in the small of her back; she couldn’t feel it, not through the armor, but she could hear the almost-inaudible scrape of metal against metal and knew it was there. She sat behind FN-2187 and his companion in the cockpit, her helmet off, her eyes narrowed, watching their every move.

Memorizing the route they took and the way they handled the controls; mentally cataloguing everything she could see on the ship’s displays. 

When they crash-landed in the old Rebel bunker, she was pushed forward by someone — FN-2187 or his companion, she couldn’t tell — and into the crowd. People moved to make way for her; their eyes were dim; their minds seemed, for the most part, shut down. Grief. Hysteria. Shock. 

It would be simple to escape if need be, Phasma thought. All these people, and she could see only one man — the pilot, the one they’d captured once before — whose eyes were sharp, whose mind was truly present.

Having noted this, she stood up straighter, knowing she wouldn’t be seen no matter what she did. She spotted small animals — crystalline foxes — moving toward the back of the cave, tracked them with her eyes. She could remove the binders on her way, once she was fully out of sight; plan in mind, determination set, she strode straight through the crowd.

And found her path blocked by a woman half her size.

“Captain Phasma,” the woman said. Her voice was low and almost gravelly; down-to-earth. Not a trace of a Core World accent, despite her origins.

General Leia Organa. Phasma recognized her, but she didn’t speak. Glacial blue eyes met warm brown ones. 

“Going somewhere?” Leia asked. Her eyebrow quirked; her lips curved into a smile. It was somehow too gentle for Phasma to describe it as smug. 

Phasma turned a little, glancing over her chrome-armored shoulder at the weakening blast door. She looked back at Leia again with a smile of her own.

“Aren’t we all, General?” she said.

* * *

The binders didn’t come off on Crait. If Phasma had defected a year later, she’d be sent to the prison camps for traitors to the First Order, doomed to months — maybe longer — of boredom broken only by meetings with an Imperial interrogation droid.

As it is, the binders came off on Ajan Kloss. She stood with her back to Leia, heard the  _ snick _ of the lock and the mechanical hiss of the binders coming undone. Felt them slip off her bare wrists.

She turned to the general, resisting the urge to rub the raw skin where the binders pinched her. Their eyes met.

“You can keep the armor,” Leia said. Her gaze flicked down to the polished chrome still encasing Phasma’s body — everything intact but the helmet and gloves. “It suits you.”

Phasma said nothing. Certainly, she didn’t express gratitude for this. The armor would serve a purpose in protecting her against blaster shots and vibroblades; if she didn’t have the armor, she would find other ways to protect herself. The armor wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t grateful. 

The armor served a purpose. The person inside it did not.

With Leia at her side, Phasma turned and surveyed the chaos of the new Resistance base — the paltry number of ships, all of them in disrepair. The handful of crates which served as their supplies. The men and women left to serve — even with all of them bustling around, busy or panicked, Phasma could count them well enough to tell there were less than a hundred left. 

She couldn’t leave now, that much was obvious. A not-entirely-willing defector — former captain of the First Order’s stormtroopers — with exclusive knowledge of the Resistance’s new base and the location of General Leia Organa, of the fighter pilot Poe Dameron, of the girl Rey who Kylo Ren was so entranced by … no, they had no intention of letting Phasma escape.

But they’d taken her binders off. They had no intention of jailing her, either. At least, not just yet.

She was startled out of her thoughts — though she didn’t flinch — when Leia laid a hand on Phasma’s armored bicep and squeezed.

“You’re strong,” Leia commented.

This was a nonsensical comment if Phasma ever heard one. She was, of course,  _ quite _ strong. There were no weak stormtroopers. But the juxtaposition of this comment, which was obvious, with Leia’s hand on her arm — which of course, Leia couldn’t actually  _ feel _ — was so ludicrous she almost laughed.

Instead, she said, “Yes,” her voice neutral, her tone mild. She was startled again when Leia responded with a light push.

“Go help, then,” she said. “Poe’s only five-eight, you know. He can’t handle those crates on his own.”

* * *

Time passed slowly on Ajan Kloss. Maybe it was the humidity that made the air feel like syrup, but when Phasma looked at her life, every moment from the day she was born to the day she took FN-2187’s hand and let him pull her from the fire — it all felt like a speed-run. Blink and you miss it. Everything blurring together so quickly you couldn’t help but miss things, forget places and names.

It was different here.

Here, Phasma remembered the first time she looked in Leia’s eyes vividly. She could replay the moment she realized she wouldn’t be executed word-for-word. She remembered coming up behind Poe Dameron in her fire-damaged armor and putting her hands on the crate next to his, and how he’d looked up at her, surprised but not alarmed, and then turned back to the task at hand casually, like she’d been helping him with menial tasks all his life.

She remembered setting up the indoor plumbing station with Leia, refusing to show her own surprise when the former princess rolled her sleeves up and set to work, heedless of the damage such work might cause to her clothes. They’d worked silently, side by side, their shoulders brushing as they laid the pipes.

Well, Leia’s shoulder brushing Phasma’s armor. Same thing. 

It felt like an eternity passed in that first week on Ajan Kloss. By the end of it, Phasma’s chrome was scuffed and scratched, with dirt and grass and water stains visible on almost every inch of it. She was sitting on an empty crate, hunched over, using her blunt thumbnail to scrape a spot of mud from her knee when she glanced up.

Saw the muscles bunching in Leia’s arms as she fit one last pipe into place. Saw the way she grit her teeth with effort, clenched her jaw. Watched Leia straighten up and stretch her back, wipe sweat from her brow, tuck a loose strand of greying hair behind her ear.

Realized.

And like she’d heard the realization somehow, Leia glanced at her — warm brown eyes into glacial blue — and shot her a smile.

“I could use a shower,” Leia said, tapping the last pipe of the now fully-functional water system with her wrench. “How about you?”

Phasma didn’t exactly smile back.

Not exactly.

* * *

Supplies were short, and everyone on Ajan Kloss was sharing quarters or sleeping under the stars. Phasma fell under the latter category, and was firm in the belief that she would have chosen this even if she had a proper choice in the matter. 

She’d chosen a spot not far from camp, but out of sight of anyone who might come looking. It was simplicity itself to build a covert shelter in the trees; she’d spotted countless Resistance members walking through the woods at night, and none of them had ever seen her, even the few who happened to glance up as they were passing by.

It wasn’t unpleasant there, with the canopy of leaves above her and the smell of life all around her. With the stars visible overhead. Secure in the knowledge that nobody can find her.

Of course, that night somebody did. 

Phasma woke without any hint of what woke her; the forest was full of sounds, but none that should have ignited her instincts and forced her to wake. She sat up quickly, silently, eyes scanning the branches around her first for signs of life. Then, moving lightly as a Lothcat over the floor of her shelter, she peered through the cracks in it at the ground below.

She recognized the person leaning against her tree instantly. Leia was lounging with her back against the trunk and her legs crossed in front of her, arms folded across her chest, head down. From above, Phasma couldn’t see her face, only her hair — and that was enough.

“You coming down?” Leia asked.

Her voice was soft, casual. The sort of tone she used in conversation with somebody sitting right next to her — not the kind of tone generally used, Phasma knew, for an enemy defector holed up in a tree.

She thought it over. She made a decision. Silently, she scaled down the trunk and dropped the last few feet, landing in a crouch at Leia’s side.

“You don’t have to go to all this trouble, you know,” Leia said, eyes twinkling. Slowly, Phasma lowered herself to the ground next to Leia. Even sitting, she towered over the other woman, forcing the general to look up at her just as Phasma was forced to look down. 

“It’s no trouble,” Phasma said.

“Don’t do that.” For once — for once with  _ her, _ at least — Leia’s voice was stern; it had an edge to it, though it was no less soft. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about yet, so don’t start deflecting.”

Something in Phasma’s chest fluttered. She rested her arms on her knees, looked out at the forest. Scanning for threats. Waiting for Leia to continue.

When she spoke again, the firmness was still there, and Phasma’s heart was still jumping. “You don’t have to go through all this trouble,” Leia said. “Maintaining your armor, even sleeping in it. The Core World accent.” She pointed vaguely upward. “That cute little treehouse up there. It’s not necessary. And you can stop scanning for threats, please. Thank you.”

Recognizing an order, Phasma reluctantly tore her gaze away from the trees. She had only two options now — she could look at her own callused hands, at the dirt beneath her fingernails, or she could look at Leia.

Her eyes darted up, met Leia’s. Froze.

“Nobody here,” said Leia slowly, deliberately, “is a threat.”

* * *

Time never seemed to speed up after that, even when the rest of the galaxy seemed to be spinning around them. Phasma’s armor went into an empty crate in Leia’s tent on Ajan Kloss, the pieces jumbled together without care or reason. Her cot was in the corner of Leia’s tent; there were members of the Resistance who saw it and assumed it was an extra seat rather than a bed. 

As if Leia would ever keep an extra seat in her tent when her people were sleeping three to a room.

It was a year of hard work, silent projects, sleepless nights. She grew accustomed to the feeling of Leia’s warm hand on her arm, to the softness of Leia’s hair beneath her hand. She grew accustomed to quiet conversations held when everyone else was sleeping — her cot pulled up alongside Leia’s, their knees touching, their eyes hooded and tired.

Her voice grew rougher as time went on.

Her accent was lost.

* * *

And in the end, they won, and Leia turned to her, not smiling even a little bit, and said, “They’re building a camp for defectors.”

Phasma looked out at the celebrations without a word. The Resistance officers and technicians and pilots all screaming with joy — warm embraces, gentle kisses — the hero of the Resistance side by side with her dark ally, daring anyone to question the presence of Ben Solo on Ajan Kloss. Leia hadn’t gone to him yet; they’d made eye contact when he’d landed, and Leia’s grip on Phasma’s hand had tightened, and then Ben had looked away.

He’d come over soon. He had to. And then he and Leia would go off alone, to talk about it, but until then…

She looked sideways at Leia. “A camp?” she said.

“A depressurization chamber, more like,” Leia said, with just a hint of her typical dryness. Her eyes were on Rey. She didn’t look at the man standing next to her. “A place to analyze defectors, see who’s really defecting and who’s just jumping ship.”

“What’s the difference?” Phasma asked.

“There isn’t one, really,” Leia said, mouth twisting. “The folks in charge of it will say there is, of course. They’re calling in intelligence agents to work there, really get inside people’s heads. They’ve even got a hold of some therapy droids, or so they say.”

“Therapy,” Phasma repeated. The word was unfamiliar to her. Leia glanced at her, didn’t comment.

“They’re calling it Traitor’s Remorse,” she said.

Phasma huffed out a laugh without smiling. She looked across the clearing, where Finn was locked in an embrace with Poe, both of them holding out their arms to Rey, who went to them. To Ben, who didn’t. At the sidelines, lost and pale, stood Phasma’s former general. He hadn’t noticed her yet; he was scanning the area, like she had scanned the cave at Crait. 

She squeezed Leia’s hand.

“I don’t think traitors feel remorse,” she said. “Not really. Not in the end.”

Silence. Leia’s head rested against Phasma’s shoulder, her eyes on the celebration, her face soft. They looked the same direction at the same time. Ben looked back.

“I hope you’re right,” Leia said.


End file.
